Maserati: the end of one era, the start of another
With heritage to die for but sales in the doldrums, Maserati is about to hit the reset button. Peek inside a company about to go on the o ensive once again
Great metaphor, terrible paint job. The mirror-finish bluey purple on the Maserati GranTurismo Zeda’s shapely nose bleeds to near black and anthracite and silver before finally there appears to be no paint at all, just the scratchiness of bare metal. The unkind might liken it to watching a nasty bruise healing in stop-motion, but the GranTurismo Zeda – zeda meaning Z in the Modenese dialect – parked symbolically at the end of the Viale Ciro Menotti production line in Modena is a one-off to mark the end of the model’s epic 12-year run, and there’s something of the struggle of a space shuttle scorching back into Earth’s orbit to that paint, a transition between two worlds that’s not entirely painless.
Viewed in the context in which Maserati finds itself today, I can see what they’re driving at: the GranTurismo almost bridges the chasm between the simpler times of its launch in 2007 to an all-new era that will banish diesel, leave behind today’s Ferrari-made engines, embrace full electrification and introduce more SUVs, hands-off Level 3 autonomy and – best ’til last – a new sports car built on a new platform that we’re assured will pop petrol in its cylinders, even if electrification is eventually inevitable too.
That sports car will be the long-awaited Alfieri, albeit significantly evolved from the concept first teased during Maserati’s centenary in 2014. And so the Zeda’s rump is unfinished, much work still to be done, the results of which the GranTurismo won’t live to see. Apt.
We’ve come to Modena to learn more about the future, but it seems appropriate to begin our journey where Maserati itself began life, not in Modena, but 25 miles east in Bologna, on Via de Pepoli. The trident and the blue and red on the badge reference the statue of Neptune in Piazza Maggiore and Bologna’s colours respectively.
We hop in a Levante Trofeo SUV – currently Maserati’s most expensive and powerful model at £125k, and with 572bhp from its Ferrari-derived 3.8-litre twin-turbocharged V8 – and strike out from Modena to Bologna. The Trofeo initially feels an easy-going companion, with a compliant ride, comfortable seats, generous space and mid-weighted steering. Accelerate casually off a slip road and there’s an effortlessness and silkiness to both the eight-speed automatic and the V8 – here with a smoother cross-plane crank, not Ferrari’s fizzier flat-plane version. With all-wheel drive and lofty visibility it’s a relaxing, reassuring drive during the early-afternoon downpour. But mash throttle to carpet and the Trofeo freefalls through gear ratios and fires explosively forwards, viciously even. It’s so startlingly rapid and responsive that I switch to manual mode to soothe its anger.
Through the depressing sprawl of Bologna’s busy, unremarkable
We’ve come to Modena to learn about the future but it seems appropriate to start our journey where Maserati began life
periphery, flattened during WW2 Allied aerial bombing, we thread into the old town with its faded pastel yellows and reds, shuttered windows and pretty archways and porticoes. Via de Pepoli is a hard left off Via Castiglione, and the narrow old cobbled street triggers the 1.9-metre-wide Levante’s parking sensors as we swing in.
You’d barely get a Levante out of a garage here, let alone knock one together inside, but it’s on this quiet street that Alfieri, Ettore and Ernesto Maserati founded Societa’ Anonima Ocine Alfieri Maserati in 1914. It was initially a car-repair business, then after the First World War the brothers focused on motorsport. Their first car, the Diatto-based Maserati Tipo 26, won the 1926 Targa Florio.
The Maserati family sold up to Italian industrialist Adolpho Orsi in 1937. He moved Maserati to Modena, before ownership switched to Citroën in 1968. The turbulence of the de Tomaso years followed from 1975, and when Alejandro de Tomaso sold the business to Fiat in 1993, he insisted his collection of Maseratis be part of the deal.
Umberto Panini, Modenese owner of that sticker empire, ultimately purchased the entire collection in 1996. A man who appropriately began his career with a Maserati apprenticeship in the ’50s, he later became a test rider for Maserati motorcycles.
The sticker business was sold in 1990, Umberto died five years back, and sons Matteo and Giovanni run a 330-hectare dairy farm these days, but they’ve kept the cars together on-site. The collection now totals 23 vehicles, all on display and open for visitors (get in touch first), and unocially this is the Maserati collection – the factory maintains a close relationship, having no back catalogue of its own.
Matteo contested the 1996 Italian GT championship in a mint green Ghibli (from the de Tomaso years, boxy like a Sport Quattro) that’s parked among the other Maseratis, and he takes us on a tour of the collection, starting with the oldest, the 6C/34. ‘It was designed for grand prix racing in 1934, when the rules said cars should weigh no more than 750 kilos and have engines no larger than 4.0 litres, that was all,’ he explains.
Given such free rein, the Maseratis’ talent for innovation flourished. A straight-six of 3.7 litres, with the head and block cast in one piece, produced 305bhp (modern hot-hatch power, half the weight) and it used independent front suspension, not a solid axle like its rivals.
Elsewhere there’s the beautiful 1953 A6GCS berlinetta that inspired the Alfieri concept, the ’60s 5000 GT that inspired Joe Walsh to sing ‘My Maserati does 185, I lost my licence and now I don’t drive’ (though it’s not Walsh’s car, Eagles fans), even Gandini’s Chubasco, a Countach-esque mid-engined concept from 1990.
Pressed to name his favourites, Matteo first leads me to the 1961 Type 63 racer, an evolution of the legendary 730kg, 320bhp, 194mph Birdcage, and one of only four V12 variants. ‘It probably is the worst to drive,’ he deadpans, ‘because really it was the front-engined Birdcage with the engine behind the driver and new independent rear suspension. Maserati didn’t have the budget to develop it properly.’
Thankfully the Paninis had the budget to restore it properly in 2001. ‘We used all the old mechanics – Bietolini for the engine, Gentilini for the body, Martinelli for the mechanics,’ explains Matteo. And then it went to Goodwood in 2003 and was driven by Nino Vacarella, who’d shared a Birdcage with Umberto Maglioli on the 1960 Targa Florio.
A full-time mechanic usually exercises these cars, but today we get the gig, and are treated to a drive in a gorgeous black ’60s Ghibli coupe. I settle in to the laid-back leather seat, work the big-lunged V8 through its rev range, marvel at the clean, direct punch of the gearshifts and ease the nicely weighted steering this way and that. With its generous torque and supple compliance this remains a fabulous GT, and one that still encapsulates the subtle elegance that should define all Maseratis.
Matteo reveals the Paninis won’t maintain the collection indefinitely, so hopefully someone can keep it together and complete the set. Anyone who’s ever tried to finish a Panini football album will surely relate to that.
Monday evening and we head to the Modena production plant, the start of the final week of production for the GranTurismo and closely related GranCabrio, and also the beautiful if disappointing Alfa Romeo 4C. The shells are brought in from the Grugliasco plant and painted in Maranello, then carried along the first line of work stations by a yellow claw that can rotate the cars round by 85º like a pig on a spit. The claw holds the bodies steady as the entire drivetrain is manoeuvred into place on an autonomous dolly, two workers per station seamlessly integrating with the mechanical ballet. With the bigger picture complete, the cars are rolled from the ⊲